7 ms·

Agreed. While I find minimum price thresholds and sin taxes personally annoying, there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with al

Agreed. While I find minimum price thresholds and sin taxes personally annoying, there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism, which has high costs in terms of healthcare and individual suffering.

pmalynin 8y ago
I hate it. It just more of Canadian government paternalism, taking away people’s agency: “you cannot be trusted to make the right decision, so we’ll make the wrong decision more expensive to do.” The worst thing isn’t even the paternalism, it’s the hypocrisy. “This tax is to protect you and everyone around you” but in reality “oh yeah please don’t stop drinking because it’s bringing in so much tax revenue.”
- csours 8y ago
  You can be trusted, but I can't. I'm an asshole.
- noarchy 8y ago
  We're saddled with these vestiges of the early 20th century because of Prohibition. But that period has long since passed. The new reason for keeping them is the revenue stream. This is often justified by the "societal cost" of alcohol because it is more fashionable to use that as the excuse, rather than money.
- daniel-cussen 8y ago
  What about drunk driving? That qualifies as endangering those around you.
  - tengbretson 8y ago
    Can we just condemn and prosecute drunk drivers and call it good enough?
    - daniel-cussen 8y ago
      I don't think it's good enough. It's just one situation, but there are others. Alcohol makes people more aggressive. It also makes them piss on the streets. A neighborhood I lived in banned alcohol sales past 10pm for those reasons. The fact is there are social costs to alcohol and they have to be internalized somehow. Taxes are a pretty good way of doing that.
      - tengbretson 8y ago
        > A neighborhood I lived in banned alcohol sales past 10pm for those reasons. Call me cynical, but I would take a good look at how many tavern owners were behind the lobbying for this sort of legislation.
      - brianwawok 8y ago
        To be fair, lack of public toilets is often a bigger cause of pissing on the streets ;)
- AaronFriel 8y ago
  Yes, that's what libertarian paternalism (see: Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein) is meant to do. Legal and abundant alcohol imposes high negative externalities on the rest of the population. Sin taxes reduce consumption because economic incentives usually work. It's when things are outright illegal (see: prohibition, narcotics) or the cost of ignoring the law is de facto lower than the legal price that things become quite dangerous for consumers, like the sale of narcotics laced with cheaper, more potent compounds like fentanyl. For better and worse, a regulated market that pushes prices upward is usually better than an unregulated market or a criminalized one.
  - noarchy 8y ago
    >libertarian paternalism Just when you think you've seen everything; someone actually came up with this term? Is this meant to try to convince libertarians as to the merits of statism and regulation?
- ticmasta 8y ago
  I agree. Lotteries and Gaming are even worse; they warn you one sentence "please play responsibly" and then with the next sell you "this is how all your dreams come true" Legal weed is the next one. They could have just decriminalized it but instead play this game to maximize how much they can sell it for without creating a black market.
- jmoss20 8y ago
  Sure, agency and personal responsibilities are important values. But if you were the lawmaker here, would you remove the sin tax? Empirically, you should be pretty confident that removing the tax will cause deaths, illnesses, etc. to go up. Keeping it costs some people some annoyance, and reduces everyone's agency. At the end of the day, you have to make a judgement on: value(agency) + value(tax annoyance) > value(deaths, illnesses, etc., externalities of these on others) So what do you do? You might think it's obvious. I'm genuinely not sure -- and I think `value(agency)` is pretty high. But am I confident enough in just how high it is /really/ to live with the possibility of being wrong? (And the, in this case pretty concrete, blood on the hands?) (What I'm really getting at here is a way to think about this, not the actual problem. Things are extremely polarized these days. Calling something paternalistic/etc is asking for an emotional response. But if what this really means is just that someone thinks `value(agency) > value(X)`, and I don't... well, there's no immediate emotional response there. How confident am I in `value(agency)` and `value(X)` really? That seems like a path to much healthier discussion, at least to me.)
noarchy 8y ago
>there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism Do you believe that you'd be an alcoholic, were it not for the high prices on alcohol, or the monopolies controlling sales in most provinces? This likely says more about you than it does those who are merely annoyed by the high prices.
- fwip 8y ago
  Whether or not that individual person would have been an alcoholic is irrelevant. We have data to prove that raising alcohol prices reduces the number of alcoholics. Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too.
  - noarchy 8y ago
    >Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too. Well I'm not an alcoholic, and it probably does say something about me. A lot of these kinds of discussions come down to what one thinks the role of the state should be in trying to engineer behaviour. Even if you could prove that government-imposed higher prices lead to a reduction in dependency, some would prefer a freer society to such controls.
    - anoncake 8y ago
      An alcoholic is not free not to drink alcohol in any meaningful sense. Restricting access to alcohol can actually make society freer if it reduces the number of alcoholics.
      - noarchy 8y ago
        >Restricting access to alcohol can actually make society freer if it reduces the number of alcoholics. That's a pretty scary way of thinking. I don't want to attack a strawman here, but it looks like you're trying to reverse the definition of "freer" to be the opposite of what most would think it is.
njepa 8y ago
I think people tend to underestimate just how artificial alcohol pricing is. Without taxes it would cost like soda (at least in theory).
- daniel-cussen 8y ago
  In Chile, ersatz wine costs $2 a bottle, at the vineyard. That's what Concha y Toro (for one) pays vintners who sell excess supply that is undifferentiated in the wine market. Perhaps without taxes it would be cheaper, but it's somewhat more expensive to make than soda.
  - njepa 8y ago
    Wine, and especially local wine, would be a relatively expensive way to make alcohol. It would be more in the category of fresh fruit juice. Something like vodka on the other hand is mostly just industrial.
    - Symbiote 8y ago
      At a tax free wholesaler in Europe (such as might supply a duty free shop at the airport), 1L of the cheapest vodka costs under €2.50. That's similar to the cheapest wine, although such shops don't really sell the cheapest wine.
  - Const-me 8y ago
    In Montenegro, the cheapest factory-made wine is about €1.5 / liter: http://mojsupermarket.me/proizvod/moje-vino-crveno-1l-808940.html http://mojsupermarket.me/proizvod/moje-vino-crveno-1l-808940... Some seasons of the year, home made wine can be found for even less.
- s3krit 8y ago
  Not even in theory. I live in Germany and can get 500ml of average beer for around 0,50€. That's cheaper than soda in a lot of cases (ignoring the cheapest soda). We can also drink in public legally, and it is socially acceptable.
AnaniasAnanas 8y ago
> there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism Would you mind linking your favorite papers concerning this? Most of the ones that I could find did not include an evaluation of the prices. I would only assume that such laws would have the biggest effect on people who are already alcoholic, lowering their quality of life as they would have to spend much more on alcohol and potentially having to avoid spending money on meals or rents.

pmalynin 8y ago

I hate it. It just more of Canadian government paternalism, taking away people’s agency: “you cannot be trusted to make the right decision, so we’ll make the wrong decision more expensive to do.” The worst thing isn’t even the paternalism, it’s the hypocrisy. “This tax is to protect you and everyone around you” but in reality “oh yeah please don’t stop drinking because it’s bringing in so much tax revenue.”

csours 8y ago
You can be trusted, but I can't. I'm an asshole.
noarchy 8y ago
We're saddled with these vestiges of the early 20th century because of Prohibition. But that period has long since passed. The new reason for keeping them is the revenue stream. This is often justified by the "societal cost" of alcohol because it is more fashionable to use that as the excuse, rather than money.
daniel-cussen 8y ago
What about drunk driving? That qualifies as endangering those around you.
- tengbretson 8y ago
  Can we just condemn and prosecute drunk drivers and call it good enough?
  - daniel-cussen 8y ago
    I don't think it's good enough. It's just one situation, but there are others. Alcohol makes people more aggressive. It also makes them piss on the streets. A neighborhood I lived in banned alcohol sales past 10pm for those reasons. The fact is there are social costs to alcohol and they have to be internalized somehow. Taxes are a pretty good way of doing that.
    - tengbretson 8y ago
      > A neighborhood I lived in banned alcohol sales past 10pm for those reasons. Call me cynical, but I would take a good look at how many tavern owners were behind the lobbying for this sort of legislation.
    - brianwawok 8y ago
      To be fair, lack of public toilets is often a bigger cause of pissing on the streets ;)
AaronFriel 8y ago
Yes, that's what libertarian paternalism (see: Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein) is meant to do. Legal and abundant alcohol imposes high negative externalities on the rest of the population. Sin taxes reduce consumption because economic incentives usually work. It's when things are outright illegal (see: prohibition, narcotics) or the cost of ignoring the law is de facto lower than the legal price that things become quite dangerous for consumers, like the sale of narcotics laced with cheaper, more potent compounds like fentanyl. For better and worse, a regulated market that pushes prices upward is usually better than an unregulated market or a criminalized one.
- noarchy 8y ago
  >libertarian paternalism Just when you think you've seen everything; someone actually came up with this term? Is this meant to try to convince libertarians as to the merits of statism and regulation?
ticmasta 8y ago
I agree. Lotteries and Gaming are even worse; they warn you one sentence "please play responsibly" and then with the next sell you "this is how all your dreams come true" Legal weed is the next one. They could have just decriminalized it but instead play this game to maximize how much they can sell it for without creating a black market.
jmoss20 8y ago
Sure, agency and personal responsibilities are important values. But if you were the lawmaker here, would you remove the sin tax? Empirically, you should be pretty confident that removing the tax will cause deaths, illnesses, etc. to go up. Keeping it costs some people some annoyance, and reduces everyone's agency. At the end of the day, you have to make a judgement on: value(agency) + value(tax annoyance) > value(deaths, illnesses, etc., externalities of these on others) So what do you do? You might think it's obvious. I'm genuinely not sure -- and I think `value(agency)` is pretty high. But am I confident enough in just how high it is /really/ to live with the possibility of being wrong? (And the, in this case pretty concrete, blood on the hands?) (What I'm really getting at here is a way to think about this, not the actual problem. Things are extremely polarized these days. Calling something paternalistic/etc is asking for an emotional response. But if what this really means is just that someone thinks `value(agency) > value(X)`, and I don't... well, there's no immediate emotional response there. How confident am I in `value(agency)` and `value(X)` really? That seems like a path to much healthier discussion, at least to me.)

noarchy 8y ago

>there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism Do you believe that you'd be an alcoholic, were it not for the high prices on alcohol, or the monopolies controlling sales in most provinces? This likely says more about you than it does those who are merely annoyed by the high prices.

fwip 8y ago
Whether or not that individual person would have been an alcoholic is irrelevant. We have data to prove that raising alcohol prices reduces the number of alcoholics. Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too.
- noarchy 8y ago
  >Do you believe you are immune to addiction? Because that says a lot about you, too. Well I'm not an alcoholic, and it probably does say something about me. A lot of these kinds of discussions come down to what one thinks the role of the state should be in trying to engineer behaviour. Even if you could prove that government-imposed higher prices lead to a reduction in dependency, some would prefer a freer society to such controls.
  - anoncake 8y ago
    An alcoholic is not free not to drink alcohol in any meaningful sense. Restricting access to alcohol can actually make society freer if it reduces the number of alcoholics.
    - noarchy 8y ago
      >Restricting access to alcohol can actually make society freer if it reduces the number of alcoholics. That's a pretty scary way of thinking. I don't want to attack a strawman here, but it looks like you're trying to reverse the definition of "freer" to be the opposite of what most would think it is.

njepa 8y ago

I think people tend to underestimate just how artificial alcohol pricing is. Without taxes it would cost like soda (at least in theory).

daniel-cussen 8y ago
In Chile, ersatz wine costs $2 a bottle, at the vineyard. That's what Concha y Toro (for one) pays vintners who sell excess supply that is undifferentiated in the wine market. Perhaps without taxes it would be cheaper, but it's somewhat more expensive to make than soda.
- njepa 8y ago
  Wine, and especially local wine, would be a relatively expensive way to make alcohol. It would be more in the category of fresh fruit juice. Something like vodka on the other hand is mostly just industrial.
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    At a tax free wholesaler in Europe (such as might supply a duty free shop at the airport), 1L of the cheapest vodka costs under €2.50. That's similar to the cheapest wine, although such shops don't really sell the cheapest wine.
- Const-me 8y ago
  In Montenegro, the cheapest factory-made wine is about €1.5 / liter: http://mojsupermarket.me/proizvod/moje-vino-crveno-1l-808940.html http://mojsupermarket.me/proizvod/moje-vino-crveno-1l-808940... Some seasons of the year, home made wine can be found for even less.
s3krit 8y ago
Not even in theory. I live in Germany and can get 500ml of average beer for around 0,50€. That's cheaper than soda in a lot of cases (ignoring the cheapest soda). We can also drink in public legally, and it is socially acceptable.

AnaniasAnanas 8y ago

> there's lots of good research associating ease of access and low prices with alcoholism Would you mind linking your favorite papers concerning this? Most of the ones that I could find did not include an evaluation of the prices. I would only assume that such laws would have the biggest effect on people who are already alcoholic, lowering their quality of life as they would have to spend much more on alcohol and potentially having to avoid spending money on meals or rents.